


never be scared

by nayanroo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Multi, TFA spoilers, my boyfriends are cool but they're not as cool as me, no idea if i'm doing this right but here we go, shamelessly buys into popular fan theories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family doesn't always mean blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never be scared

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing but here I am doing it anyway. I haven't finished the TFA novelization so I have no idea if what I'm writing isn't compliant with that, but I _have_ seen the movie four times so far, so I think I'm doing okay.
> 
> Title from "Home" by Ella Eyre. Check her out, she's got a great voice!

If the monitors hadn’t been playing the soft thump-thump of his heart, Rey wouldn’t have been sure that Finn lived. He was still as she sat by his bed, the seemingly boundless well of energy now tamped down. The medical droids said that he was in a coma, his body shut down while it repaired the damage Kylo Ren had done to him. Right now it seemed like one more thing the man had taken from her.

Closing her eyes, Rey wondered at just how much bigger her world had become over the last few days. It felt like Jakku was more than just lightyears away, it was a lifetime away. She had gone from having no one to having the whole Resistance to losing Han to finding in herself a power she’d never thought could belong to a simple scavenger like her. It was almost, almost, too much.

She leaned over, pressing her lips to Finn’s forehead, and left.

On the way out she ran into the pilot – Poe, she remembered, Poe Dameron. Finn had seemed enamored of him in some way he hadn’t had time to explain to her as they were running around in the snow (the snow!) on Starkiller Base, but the way the two men had clearly been happy to see each other had made her smile. Poe the pilot was hanging out in the hallway outside the medbay, or perhaps hovering in the hallway outside the medbay, Finn’s jacket folded over his arm as he paced the few steps back and forth across from one wall to the other. He nearly ran into her on one pass, and immediately stepped back.

“My apologies, ma’am,” he said, polite as could be. Then he got another look at her and smiled a bit, pushing dashingly tousled black curls out of his eyes. “You’re the girl from Jakku, aren’t you? The one Finn wanted to go rescue.”

“I am.” She hesitated, then stuck out a hand. “I’m Rey.”

“Poe Dameron.” He shook her hand firmly, but his eyes were on the door. “Has he…?”

“He’s still asleep. But the medical droids said that if he wakes up, it will be soon.”

If he wakes up hung in the air between them for a moment, but they both seemed to shake it off at the same time. Poe gestured to her bag. “So you’re leaving? Back to Jakku?”  
“No. There’s… there’s nothing on Jakku for me, not anymore.” The words struck something in her heart, a rising fear that she had to get back, had to wait, had to… “The General has given me a mission. She wants me to go find Luke Skywalker.”

Poe let out a low whistle. “The man himself. Do you think you’ll find him?”

“If he’s real.”

“The General would know, wouldn’t she?” Poe eyed her. “Why is she sending you?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue. She thinks we’ll get on, maybe.” Rey didn’t know what else to say, so she remained silent. Luckily Poe seemed to know how to fill quiet.

“Well, hopefully you find him. We need the Jedi now, more than ever.”

She thought about her fight on Starkiller Base, about the lightsaber stowed in her bag. Blue against red against white and darkness, the twisted rage in Kylo Ren’s face as he bore down, bending her back against the cliff, the hissed offer to train her, but then she thought of calm, of light, and let it all pass. It didn’t serve her right now. “I hope I find him too. Take care of yourself, Poe Dameron.”

“You too, Rey.”

He slipped by her into the medbay and she left, forcing herself not to look back.

*

The chair by Finn’s bed was still warm from where Rey had been sitting. Poe pulled it up a bit closer, his knees knocking the side of the bed, checking the readouts as he did. Still alive, still asleep. Some had questioned why he and Rey and the General had been so insistent on spending valuable Resistance resources on a former Stormtrooper, but once his role in their victory at Starkiller Base had been explained those voices had quieted. Finn was exactly the kind of person they needed.

“Hey, Finn,” he said after a moment. It felt odd to be talking to someone who couldn’t reply, but Poe hadn’t ever liked the silence. “I, uh, I have the jacket. Your jacket. Some idiot put a bloody great hole in the shoulder and one across the back too, what were you doing, it looks like it’s been burned... but I found someone to fix it up. Not good as new, but now it has more character.”

He fingered one of the lighter colored patches that stood out against the careworn material, then carefully folded the jacket and put it by Finn’s head. “It’ll be here for you when you wake up. D’Qar is going into its cold season, you’ll need it. When you wake up.”

He grew quiet again, watching the slow rise and fall of Finn’s chest. It had been awful when they’d first brought him in off the Falcon, they’d had him hooked up to tubes and lines while they worked on him. Now it wasn’t so bad. Just… difficult.

“I’ll teach you how to fly,” he continued. “You’re quick enough to pick up on it. We need pilots, Rey and I can’t carry the whole Resistance on our own. She’s… she’s nice. I just met her. I can tell she cares about you. We both do. But you need to learn how to be a pilot, and to do that you need to wake up. I need you to wake up.”

Poe waited, holding his breath. If the Force were real, it would surely choose now to wake him up. His eyes would open and that big grin would spread across his face and Finn would be back, his curiosity and his fascination with the life he’d never been able to have outside of the First Order would be back. But he didn’t wake up, not for as long as Poe sat there, and in the end he put his hand on Finn’s arm and rested it there for a moment before standing and leaving the medbay.

*

Leia’s days started long before dawn on D’Qar and never really ended, but she always did her best to be abed before graveyard came on shift. She had precious little time to herself, but in this she felt she was using it more than wisely.

“I know I’ve already said that you did,” she said quietly to the young man sleeping on the medical pallet, “Was incredibly brave. Probably – well, definitely stupid, but stupidity and bravery have gone together, in my experience. You need a medal.”

She smiled a little, her hand holding Finn’s large, warm one. Sadness gnawed at the edges of her mind, but Finn was one of her people now, and since she was a girl on Alderaan she had been taught to put her people first. It was the right thing to do, and if anyone deserved her personal attention it was this remarkable young man.

“You’ve been through more in your short life than anyone else I know,” she continued. “Save myself, maybe, and Luke. Our lives started in violence and they’ll probably end in violence, too, but if we can give you young people the seeds of peace, you’ll make it grow. Especially someone with a heart like yours. As long as there are people like you in this galaxy, Finn, there’s hope.”

The lateness of the hour and the quiet of the base stilled her words after a time, but Leia sat by Finn’s bed for a while longer. She had seen how Poe and Finn looked at each other and how Finn and Rey looked at each other and knew he would not be alone, but Poe was offworld on a mission and Leia herself had sent Rey to find Luke, and it had seemed to Leia as she passed the medbay that Finn didn’t deserve to be alone. Leia, now… she was old, and her great love was gone and her child had quite effectively burned his bridges, but she still had love and care in her to give and she would give it as she saw fit. She only hoped that she could see her brother again. Alone he might not be, not really, but she could faintly sense his despair. That was a wound she would see healed before it was too late.

If she was to leave, Leia thought, if the First Order claimed her life as it had claimed Han’s, she would do it the same way she came into the world – with her twin, and both of them with hope in their hearts.

*

Poe was with Finn when Rey returned.

It started as a faint rumble, as though many people were moving at once; on a paramilitary base like this one it wasn’t an uncommon thing to have happen, but when the sound reached the medbay and was accompanied by wild yelling, Poe looked up to see what was going on.

“He’s back!” someone yelled as they passed. “He’s come back!”

He almost asked _who_ was back before it hit him. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured to Finn before he joined the stream of beings heading up to the landing field. The _Millennium Falcon_ was at the far end surrounded by a cluster of people, but there were only two that Poe wanted to see.

As he was shoving his way through, he passed Rey going the other way and grabbed her wrist. “You did it!” he exclaimed excitedly. It was then that he saw the expression on her face, like the rug had been pulled out from under her feet. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I… I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she replied, her voice shaky. “I need to go see Finn.”

Poe looked between the landing ramp, where a hooded figure was embracing the General tightly, and the slight, suntanned woman in front of him. Which of them needed him more?  
“I just came from him,” Poe said. “I’ll go with you—“

Rey tore herself away, but not before he saw her red-rimmed eyes take on a very upsetting and watery shine. “I’ll go alone,” she called over her shoulder. “Don’t follow me.”  
He wasn’t very good at listening, though. While he was delayed slightly, Poe found himself back at the medbay, watching Rey’s shoulders shake. She wasn’t making any noise, and he knew it would shame her if he pointed it out from here, but he couldn’t just let her bear her pain alone.

The sound of him drawing up another chair made her sit up, but when she saw who it was Rey relaxed slightly, letting Poe drape the jacket over her shoulders. They sat silently for a long time, watching the monitors beeping and blinking, listening to the slow steady echo of Finn’s heart through the speakers. At last, Poe cleared his throat.

“I know you don’t really know me at all,” he said, “But if you feel like you need to talk to someone who isn’t a galactic legend yet, I’m here.”

“Thank you.” Rey folded her arms on the edge of the pallet. Her tears had stopped, but her eyes were still a bit red, and he reached over to pour her a glass of water, watching as she slurped it down greedily, then looked a bit guilty for having done so. “I forget,” she said, “Water is everywhere here. I don’t have to work for bites of food. Everything… everything is different here, and the people I did know…”

She looked at Finn again and seemed about to cry, and Poe hurriedly refilled her glass. “Some things aren’t all that different,” he said. “I heard you’re pretty good with mechanical things. Could sure use your help putting in some more mods to it, all the other mechanics are busy.”

For the first time he caught her smile, and understood a little bit of what Finn must have seen when he’d met her. “I’d like that,” she said. “It feels wrong to eat so much without doing something to earn it.”

So the next morning they started by tearing down the port engines and figuring out what was causing them to lag slightly. Rey really did know her stuff, and it was fascinating to watch her work, scowling at different components that he doubted she’d ever seen before and sussing out just exactly what was wrong and not only fixing it, but improving the overall function. From there they moved on to the actual modifications, things that would allow Poe to move faster, shoot faster, and blow things up in more spectacular ways. 

As they worked, they talked sometimes; Rey told him about her life on Jakku, and he told her about his parents and growing up on Yavin IV, enjoying her wistful daydreaming about the jungle.

“I’d like to see it,” she said quietly one day, when they broke for lunch. They were sitting on top of his X-Wing, with BB-8 beeping busily to himself on the ground below, and the sun was out and it was pleasant and warm. Rey turned her face to the light. “I can’t imagine a place like that.”

“I’ll take you when this is over, I promise. You and Finn both. I think my dad would love both of you.”

She pushed the remains of her lunch around her tray. “I wish…” 

But she didn’t finish and Poe didn’t push her, not wanting her to leave. So he changed the subject, and they talked about flying, and she promised to let him have a crack at the _Falcon_ if Chewbacca allowed.

“When he wakes up we’re going to have to teach Finn how to fly,” Poe said when they’d resumed working and Rey was hanging out the back end of the engine compartment, her feet dangling. “Otherwise he’s just going to hound both of us.”

Sometimes they’d have an audience, not that Rey seemed to notice; the General would come and sit on crates and chat with Poe, ask after Finn and quietly tell him she was glad he was helping Rey fit in, saying that all leaders were like parents to those who followed them. She had a wistful look in her eye when she said it, though, one that made Poe shift the subject. He hated to see the General so sad.

Sometimes, Luke Skywalker would come watch. He wouldn’t come closer, just stand in the big doorway into the base or lean on the sun-warmed rock wall and watch Rey work, and there was sadness in his face too. Poe didn’t know where to even start to cheer up a Jedi Master, so he kept his head down and just listened whenever Rey made vague gestures at tools she needed. She seemed to be stubbornly avoiding talking to Skywalker beyond an exchange of pleasantries, but every time she saw him Poe saw her eyes track over, saw the tension build in her shoulders.

When it happened while they were visiting Finn after dinner one night, Poe couldn’t stop his curiosity anymore. “Switch that around to your front so I can get at your shoulders,” he said, tugging lightly on the sleeve of the jacket that seemed destined to never belong to just him. “You’ve got a planet on each one and if you’re okay with it—“ her aversion to unexpected touches had resulted in some spectacular curses flung his way during the course of their engine rebuild and Poe had learned his lesson quickly “—I’ll help with that.”  
Rey eyed him, then sighed and slipped the jacket on backwards, letting Poe get to work on her shoulders. She remained sullenly silent, though, her fingers slipping just around Finn’s palm. Frankly he considered it a mark of her trust that she let him do this at all, and _maybe_ he was pushing it by asking questions too, but Poe had never been one to let risks stop him.

“So what’s going on?” he asked. “Did Luke Skywalker say something to you? Because if he did, I don’t care if he’s a legend and a Jedi, I’ll help you take him out.”

“What? No. Well…” Rey chewed her lip. “Yes. I guess.”

It was a struggle to stay silent but he knew Rey was skittish when it came to these things and he’d just have to let her get it out on her own time, if she was going to say anything at all. Apparently she trusted him enough for this too, and continued.

“He told me he’s my father.”

Poe froze. “Your _father?_ ”

“I just said that.”

“I know, I’m just having trouble believing it.”

Rey twisted in her seat. “Is it so unbelievable?”

He was on thin ice, and something was telling him not to make a mess of this. “That’s not what I meant. But I get why you’ve been avoiding him lately. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to my parents if they’d abandoned me on a desert planet either.”

“I’m not avoiding him. I just have nothing to say to him, father or no.” She turned back around, her eyes on Finn’s hand. “I wouldn’t know what to say, anyway.”

“Well… my offer stands.” Poe finished working her shoulders and just rested his hands on them. Finn cared about Rey, and he cared about Finn, and working with Rey had proved her to be smart and capable and funny in her aloof way, and he really did hate to see her upset. “I’ve got your six.”

“Me too.”

Had it been possible they’d have both gone into orbit. But Rey’s hand was caught in Finn’s now, and though his voice was rough with disuse and he seemed too pale to be fully healthy, Finn’s eyes had cracked open, and as he watched Rey lit up and caught Finn’s hand completely in both of hers.

“You’re awake!” she said joyfully, and Finn smiled at her in a way that tugged Poe’s heart in an uncomfortable way. But when he made to back off, Finn shook his head and did his best to reach for Poe too.

“Hey, you still have bandages on your back,” Poe said, moving back closer and gently pushing Finn’s arm back down. He did lay his hand on top of Rey and Finn’s though, and something seemed to jolt them all at the same time, something far more pleasant. They all went quiet, looking between each other quizzically.

 _Oh good,_ Poe thought, reaching the answer first. _It’s not just me._

Rey met his eyes, understanding it herself. But she shook her head a bit – now wasn’t the time. They’d all talk about it later.

“Rey,” Finn rasped, “Next time you decide to drop a bomb like _I’m Luke Skywalker’s daughter_ , wait until I’m fully awake, please? I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that he’s not just a myth.”

She smiled down at him, her fingers squeezing his – and Poe’s, twined between their hands. “Of course,” she replied. “I think we’ll have a lot to talk about. But not right now.”

“ _Really_ not right now.” One of the medical staff was coming in behind them, followed closely but a 2-1B medical droid and the General, with Luke on her heels. Rey stiffened, but glanced at their hands resting together and let the tension go. And then they were all pulled apart, but something seemed to have clicked into place, because even as Poe and Rey were gently urged aside so that Finn could be examined, they both ended up stepping into the hallway with the same question on their faces.

“Is this going to be weird?” Poe asked her. “It feels like it could be weird.”

Rey opened her mouth, closed it again. “I don’t think it’s possible for my life to become stranger than it already is,” she replied at last. “Besides, it wouldn’t be the most outrageous thing in the galaxy, both of us and Finn… would it?”

“No, I don’t think it would be. It’s happened before.”

“Has it?” Rey chewed her lip, and Poe reached over for her hand. Small steps, small touches, and he’d have to throttle back hard, but it would be worth it.

“We’ll figure it out. You, me, and Finn, we’ll figure it out.”

“When he’s better,” Rey insisted.

“Probably a good idea. We don’t want him passing out again.”

“No, we don’t.” She looked down and curled her fingers around his palm. It seemed to take a bit of effort on her part, and Poe gave her hand a squeeze and let it go. “And I… so much has just happened. I cannot make promises.”

“I’m not asking for anything but what you’re willing to give. I don’t think Finn would do that either.”

They went back inside after everyone had cleared off. Finn was propped up on the pallet, and his face brightened when he saw them. He still had leads all over him, but seeing him awake and grinning felt like coming out from behind a moon into the full light of day.

“I’ve got some work to do,” he said. “They think my back’s going to be fine – I guess Kylo Ren missed my spinal cord, I won’t be paralyzed and the bacta treatments repaired a lot too – but they say I need to take it easy when I get back on my feet, and they’ll want to see me once a day to help me, and… I didn’t think they would be so nice, I’m a Stormtrooper.”

“You’re Resistance now,” Poe said. “And we take care of our own.”

*

Finn’s recovery was slow; for all that bacta did it couldn’t work miracles, and watching him have to painfully walk with the aid of bars and canes hurt Poe’s heart. But Finn seemed to take it all in stride, though he got frustrated with the slow progress just as much as Poe and Rey did.

“If I didn’t have the two of you,” Finn told him, lying flat on his back on a mat and stretching his legs up above him, pushing at an elastic strap held against his chest, “I think I’d go completely insane. I’d be waving a red lightsaber around, cutting up planets…”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Rey said, sitting against the wall. She was methodically taking apart and reassembling a piece of something or other, which Poe had learned was her way of expressing anxiety. He’d seen her sitting in the work bay with Luke earlier, both of them talking quietly. She’d been brittle since then; when Poe had tried to put his hand on her shoulder she’d shook it off with a glare, and he’d backed off. They both came together for Finn’s therapy session though. He was walking without the bars now, holding on to both of them as he perambulated slowly around the room they’d appropriated for his sessions.

“Sorry.” Finn gave her such a look that she ducked her head and smiled, just a little. “But I think if anyone can joke about it, it’s me. I got cut up, you know. Right here.” He did something he was quite proud of – twisting to point at his back, something he couldn’t have done a few weeks ago.

“We know,” Poe replied. “You’re going to get a head as big as a pilot without even touching the controls if you keep that up.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rey mumbled, but there wasn’t venom to it.

“I’m serious, though.” Finn let his legs fall to the mat and grabbed onto Poe’s thigh to help himself sit up. He still moved with an unnatural stiffness and sat a bit awkwardly to ease the strain on his healing wounds, but he did it. “You two saved me. Literally and mentally, and now you’re doing it physically too.” He twisted his hands together, an oddly nervous gesture. “I’m… I’m grateful. Really.”

The three of them shared a look, and there was that spark again. But this time, Finn didn’t let it pass.

“I think I’m in love with both of you,” he said, so matter-of-factly that they both sat upright. “Is that weird? Is that something that we can do?”

“I’d like to see them try to stop me,” Rey said, and now Poe could see the Skywalker in her. There had been light returning to Luke’s eyes since he came back from wherever he’d holed up, and the same pride that the General carried herself with had come to rest in Rey too.

“I know you probably don’t know much about how things work out here,” Poe began, but Finn cut him off.

“It was discouraged among us,” he said. “But I know how it works. And I know how I feel. That’s never been a problem for me, whatever the First Order tried to get into my head.”

Rey put her tools down and crawled onto the mat to sit with them, and Poe tossed the elastic strap onto a pile of other equipment. “We’ll just figure it out as we go along.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing anyway?”

“It’s worked out so far.”

Rey looked between them, and the weight seemed to lift from her shoulders as her eyes took on a bit of a sparkle. “We did figure out one thing, though, while you were sleeping,” she said. “So keep up with your exercises, Finn. We’re going to teach you to fly.”

*

In the weeks that followed, many things happened.

Poe had a problem keeping his mouth shut, and somehow made it plain to everyone that the lightness in his step and the grin on his face was due to the fact that he was _with_ Finn and Rey. This caused some tension between him and Rey, who had intended to keep her private life private, mostly because her father was living on the base now and however strained their relationship was, it was getting better. Poe apologized profusely, and let her fly his X-Wing, after which she came back grinning and making a list of improvements to be done to make it better.

Finn, for all his past as a Stormtrooper, seemed to be near-universally accepted by the other Resistance members. His personality probably helped quite a bit with that. And he learned how to fly, or at least how to push the right buttons and take the _Falcon_ for a slow and only slightly alarming loop around D’Qar and one of its moons, and Rey only had to grab her controls once, and after that Finn improved rapidly.

They did _not_ move into shared quarters, mostly because Rey still liked having her own space and Poe was gone on missions a lot more now that Finn was up and about, but Finn’s favorite thing became waking up some mornings to Rey curled up tightly on her side, using his arm as a pillow, and Poe sprawled across him. It was comforting, and having been raised to trust those he fought beside, Finn fell into this far more easily than he thought possible.

When Rey’s mother arrived on base, swooping in over the landing field to settle her ship tidily beside the _Falcon_ , Rey was waiting beside her father, with Finn and Poe trying to be unobtrusive behind a stack of crates. Rey had insisted on going with just Luke, but they worried about her. It seemed they didn’t have much to worry about; Rey’s mother, a very canny redhead named Mara, seemed to take their measure when she met them. She must have liked what she saw, because when Rey crawled into bed with them that night, she was smiling, and related Mara’s storied life to her partners.

“You’ve got a family now, too,” Poe said. Finn had dropped off quickly but they were still awake, talking across his chest. Rey shook her head.

“I had a family already,” she replied. “I found the both of you, didn’t I?”

She reached over and touched his cheek lightly, then tucked herself up into her usual little ball and went to sleep. Poe grinned into his pillow and wrapped an arm around Finn’s waist; Finn grumbled something in his sleep, fingers twitching against Poe’s hip.

Whatever the First Order did, they’d never take this from him, Poe thought. Let them come, let them try. They would never be as strong as he felt right now with his two favorite people in the galaxy beside him.


End file.
